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DETROIT — Muslim leaders say a spate of vandalism over the weekend involving stores owned by local Iraqis could stem from brewing sectarian Islamic tension over the execution of Saddam Hussein.

While Shi’a and Sunni Muslims are fighting in Iraq, the two groups generally get along in Metro Detroit and the United States. But Muslim and Arab leaders say the hanging of Saddam, and especially the timing of the execution, spurred hard feelings.

They say the vandalized property was owned or operated by people of Iraqi descent who are Shi’a.

“People are scared to come here. It’s very dangerous, this place,” said Inaam Alkhafaji, referring to her Detroit business, Dana Media, whose windows were broken.

“It’s a war with the Iraqi people. Maybe next time they kill us.”

The tension that concerns Muslim leaders was spurred by the timing of the execution, according to Dawud Walid, the executive director of the Council on American Islamic Relations and other community leaders.

Saddam was ordered hanged by the Shi’a controlled government of Iraq on the morning Sunnis began celebrating Eid al-Adha, the holiest of Islamic festivals. Most Shi’a did not begin to celebrate until the following day.

While Shi’a Iraqis took to the streets of Dearborn to celebrate, many other Muslims viewed the timing of the execution as an insult. Realizing the tension in the local community, some clergymen were considering meeting this week to take action.

Shattered glass remained inside a cardboard box outside of Alkhafaji’s store on Warren Avenue Monday. Next door, the window of the Al-Akhasi restaurant was boarded up — it, too, had been smashed. A person called the restaurant earlier that day and made a threat that an incident would occur.

The incidents follow similar acts of vandalism at stores along Seven Mile near Woodward, Arab leaders say.

With the example of their youthful French counterparts, and unable to continue in the facade of tolerance, even for fellow Muslims, acting out their repressed true rage toward the Shia neighbors was only a matter of time.

Although this happens daily all over the Muslim world, it sucks its happening right down the street.

mullah cimocsaid

Mullah Cimoc say that relentless slaughter is sapping the strength of ameriki.

Obvious to all is that evil doings cause more harm to the doer than the victim. Every time another muslim is slaughtered for israeli more than 550 ameriki young men turn feminzed with gel in hair and no will to fight. Of course the next step is the homosexual.

Every child slaughtered in Iraq is 6000 more ameriki women become sluts with the LBT (low back tatoo). Bush is actually destroying amerika, all the while making the ummah stronger.

There is justice in the world and the sissies, sluts and feminzed men of amerika are the evidence.

Itwillall, that was a while ago. Not a lot of people in the US were happy about that. However, as a Chicagoan with a lot of Irish friends and someone who loves Ireland and is Catholic, the day that Sinn Fein and the rest stand up with Al Qaeda — as they’ve done to some point — is the day that they lose all of our pity. Stand with our enemy and then you are the enemy.

Rich Rostromsaid

Umm, first, there are large Moslem countries outside the Middle East. Indonesia, for instance: the capita, Djakarta, has 9M people. Dearborn has less than 100,000 people, of whom 30,000 are Arabs, and not all of those are Moslem. (Most Arab-Americans were Christians, and that may still be so.) NYC has 70,000 Arabs; of course that is not a concentrated population or a large proportion of NYC’s vast population. Dearborn has the largest concentration of Arabs in America.